Creating music is easier than ever now thanks to the availability of digital music tools. Most of those tools, however, require at least some training or specialized knowledge before you can start making music. Not so with the Dyskograf, an art installation that creates music with nothing more than the markings from a felt tip pen.

Invented by art collective Avoka, the Dyskograf is primarily a graphical disk drive that translates drawings into music. Using a camera mounted on an arm, the graphical disk drive translates markings on a paper “record” into rudimentary music sounds. The more marks the user adds, the more layers of sound are piled onto the new song.

The interface allows for a unique physical connection with music, something that is in short supply in the era of digitized, hands-off music.

This unusual method of composing music allows for mistakes, coincidences and surprises. In this way, it is quite different from the traditional paper-and-pencil method yet also far removed from the digital composing and editing used by many modern musicians. It is at once a throwback to a more physical time, an homage to the digital world, and a brand new musical creation medium unto itself.